Terra Lives
by reallysmallworld
Summary: Raven has defeated her father, but unknown to all of the Titans, her spell has revived Terra. Terra, still in despair from what she has done, decides to try and build a new life for herself, one where she cannot be hurt or hurt anyone anymore.
1. Chapter 1: New Beginnings

Hope. That was the first thing she felt, the only thing she felt. It was this sudden, joyous feeling that lit up her world after it had spent so long in deep darkness. It seemed as if a great weight had been lifted from her and she was now flying.

Pain. That was what she felt next. It was pain so unbearable that she thought it might never end, and somehow, deep down, she knew that it never really would. The light left her, and gravity regained its hold on her, and she crashed down onto the cold, hard ground.

Every muscle ached. Every bone felt as if it had been shattered. Her skin felt raw. She fought back tears as she gasped for breath with lungs that felt as if they had been crushed. She longed for the hope that had cruelly left her as suddenly as it had come.

As she lay still, not daring to move, memories flooded back to her, causing a fresh wave of tears to stream from her eyes. More pain.

_My name is Terra. I have done horrible things._

Terra, as she now remembered her name, cried harder and wished for the memories to stop. She would prefer to forget. She didn't know where she was or what was going on, but she almost wanted to stay confused. She longed for the bliss that came from not knowing and remaining innocent.

_I have sworn to serve a dark master. I have obeyed his every command and committed crimes in his name._

She recalled her horrible former master Slade and his horrible lone eye that had watched her, looked down on her, seeing her as both something and nothing as he did horrible things to her. There were those times when he had beat her, but at one time, she would have considered him a friend. He had given her a sense of control over her erratic powers, but...

_I have betrayed and attacked everyone who used to be my friend. One by one, I have destroyed the Teen Titans._

Just like she had betrayed the Titans, her friends, though she could hardly bear to call them that after what she had done to them, for Slade, she had turned on him in the end. She had brought him down, way down. He could not control her, even with the suit that he had fused with her nervous system. She was the one who was supposed to be in control.

_And with no one left to stop me, I have brought an entire city to its_ knees.

But that hadn't been what she had wanted. Why had she thought she wanted control and power over others when she only need control over her powers? Hadn't that been the very reason she had destroyed Slade? Because he tried to forcefully control her?

_My name is Terra. I have done horrible things, and I..._

"I..."

_...have absolutely..._

"...am..."

_...no..._

"...so..."

_...regrets._

"...sorry."

Her cry echoed back to her, causing her to wonder exactly where she even was. Slowly, she opened her eyes, though even this tiny movement brought on more pain. With sore and blurry eyes, she examined her surroundings. To her horror, she was still in the old lair.

This realization shocked her so much that she immediately tried to sit straight up, and she screamed from the pain. Looking down at her body to see what had caused it, she screamed again from the horror. She was still wearing the suit, but it had been damaged, and jagged edges of the metal pierced the same skin it was grafted onto. Blood soaked into the old, torn bandages she wore.

For a terrifying moment, she thought that she might still be Slade's apprentice, and everything else had been an illusion, that Slade had just beaten her so bad that she had passed out. It wouldn't have been the first time. Terra began to panic and tried to get up and run away but could only manage a slow, exhausted crawl. Inevitably, she collapsed after only a few feet.

She waited and waited, her panic starting to lose its edge but still half-expecting Slade to come and kick her while she was down, but nothing happened. It took several long minutes for Terra to gather what was left of her strength and wits before she could sit back up again. When she did, she saw something that finally put her current fears to rest: her tomb.

It looked like an ordinary rock formation from a distance, but as she inched closer, she saw flowers strewn all around it, both fresh and old, and a plaque that read:

**Terra**

**A Teen Titan**

**And A True Friend**

Terra couldn't help but begin bawling again, burying her face in a bouquet of daisies as more memories, fuzzier ones that she hadn't remembered at first, came to light. These were from her time spent as a statue - how long had she been like that, anyway? - and most of them were of Beast Boy. He would come visit her and talk to her. She couldn't quite remember what he had said or how often he had come, but she remembered him being there. She remembered him smiling at her.

It was a smile that she didn't deserve.

She didn't deserve any of it. The flowers and the monument weren't right for her, and she hated the Titans for not seeing that. She hadn't been a true friend or a Titan. She was a traitor. She pretended to be a Titan to exploit their friendship and betray them, and even though she regretted it now, that didn't change anything she had done. She wanted to shatter the plaque praising her into nothingness, but she felt weak and drained. Using her powers seemed impossible at the moment. Even her crazy emotions hadn't caused her powers to go even a little crazy. Not a single pebble had moved the entire time she had been awake.

Then, an idea occurred to her. She could not stay where she was. Beast Boy would return at some point to lay undeserved flowers at an empty grave. When had he last come? How much longer did she have? She would not let him find her there. It would just be more pain.

What would he do if he saw her? Would he die of shock? Would he still be mad at her? Would he run to her with open arms and a smile, saying he missed her and was glad that she was back? That would be the worst option, in her opinion. There had been a time long ago when she had wished for him to do something like that, to tell her that everything was okay and that he would be her friend no matter what, but he had coldly turned her away that time.

She would rather hear that again because it was the only correct response to an awful person like her. She realized now how wrong she was, and she refused to accept praise she had done nothing to earn, and she also refused to return to a team that either didn't trust her or couldn't decide who they thought she was. In fact, she wasn't so sure herself. What do you call someone who screws up their life past the point of no return? Hopeless, maybe. No matter how much she wished, Slade had been right about one thing. It was far too late to return to her old life.

Still, despite her being hopeless and all, she had somehow been given a second chance to hope, and she could not waste it. She decided that she just couldn't be good or evil. Either side brought her pain, and from now on, she swore to avoid it. She just needed to disappear so that she could not be hurt anymore. She would just be an average teenage girl who worried about average teenage problems, not a hero or a villain. No more Terra, the girl both blessed and cursed with awesome power.

She didn't know how she would pull this off. There were the issues of acquiring a home and getting off the suit, but she knew where to start, at least. She knew that in a short time, she would need to practice controlling her powers only so they would never give away who she was in the future.

Slowly, painfully, Terra brought herself to her feet to begin the slower, more painful process of building a brand new life, which, sadly, she had done a few times in the past, but never to this magnitude.


	2. Chapter 2: Don't Tell

Terra snuck out of the lair late at night, wrapped only in a blanket, trying to avoid any sightings, lest she draw the Titans' attention. She was vaguely aware that she was leaving behind a trail of scarlet footprints, but that pain felt dull compared to what she had just put herself through. To her, the fresh stinging brought on by the crisp night air felt almost worse than her wounds at this point. She hadn't considered what time of year it was and didn't even think about how cold it would be while she had had time to get used to the new gashes covering her body.

She ran barefoot as fast as she could, wanting to get this over with as fast as possible, but she was wheezing within seconds. Her blood was starting to soak into the blanket. The drugstore, her destination, wasn't that far away, but at the rate she was going, she might never reach it before morning...or ever. She considered maybe floating on a rock to go faster. The exhaustion caused by using her powers seemed much preferable to bleeding to death in the street. She was about to bring up the earth when she realized that a giant, gaping hole in the street would be extremely noticeable, and she wanted to avoid that as much as possible. Terra sighed, hugged the blanket closer to her, and walked on, stumbling over her frozen feet.

It was with good fortune that she happened upon a row of stores marked for demolition. Eagerly, she ran down an alley between two of them and into the back where a chunk of missing pavement might just go unnoticed.

Summoning what little strength she had left, Terra felt the earth crack beneath her. She raised her hands, and the rock rose with them, and suddenly she was in the air, climbing higher and higher every second. She looked down at the buildings below her one last time and sadly recognized one as the video store she used to frequent with the Titans. It was being torn down, and she wondered that maybe that would be okay. It wouldn't stand as a reminder to her of awful times anymore. Terra closed her eyes and forced herself to look away and move on. She could not afford to let her heart sink. With how weak she was, it would take complete concentration to get where she was going.

It was colder in the sky with the biting wind blowing back her blanket, but it was kind of nice in a way. The city below her seemed so peaceful, not at all like she remembered, and the stars over her head shone beautifully. It reminded her of the many nights she had spent gazing up at them from a makeshift bed in a makeshift camp. She loved the stars.

A bird, dark as the night, flew by at her level and cried out in shock when it saw her. Terra watched it fly away from her again and fade back into the blackness of the sky, disappearing as quickly as it had come.

Finally, she reached her destination and started lowering her rock down towards it, but she was even more tired now and way out of practice, and without the strength to simply hop down to the ground like she used to, she came in for a rocky landing, literally. The stone hit the ground hard, cracking in several places and throwing her into the street where she skidded a few feet on the pavement. She bled more.

Terra laid there for several minutes with the wind knocked out of her. She figured that the landing could have been worse. She had gotten off with only a few scrapes and bruises, not broken bones to speak of, though she had never been one to break easily. Terra dragged herself to her feet, adjusting the blanket so that it stuck tight against her once again. She noticed that blood was starting to soak through to the other side and become noticeable. She would have to be quick in the store to avoid any unwanted attention.

She heard the call of a bird nearby and watched as one landed on a nearby lamppost. It appeared to be the same one from before, which Terra knew was pretty impossible. It did nothing except watch her. Terra, a little creeped out, hurried inside the drugstore.

She rushed through all of the aisles, keeping her head down to avoid making eye contact with the few shoppers in the all-night drugstore. She gathered a simple first-aid kit, roll after roll of bandages, a large bottle of peroxide, several bottles of pain medication, and a mountain of candy bars and other snacks. The cashier stared at her purchases curiously and then at her. "Ma'am, are you alright?" he aked with genuine concern, ringing up the items mechanically.

"I'm fine," she tried to assure him, pushing her tangled hair away from her face then grabbing a cheap comb from a display on the counter. He raised an eyebrow skeptically at her. Terra was well aware of how terrible she must have looked being wrapped in a ratty, old blanket spotted with blood and her hair, also tinted crimson at certain points, in such disarray.

"That'll be...whoah." The cashier gaped as she reached inside her blacked to grab some money. It fell partly away, revealing a little of the destruction that lay underneath, consisting of bruised and bloodied skin fused in parts with shards of metal: what was left behind of the suit. Terra had gotten rid of the awful thing the only way she really knew how: smashing it. She had pelted it with rocks (sometimes missing and hitting herself), beating away the armor and circuitry until almost nothing was left. It wasn't pretty, and it had been a long, excruciation process, but she had done enough.

She couldn't help but think that Cyborg might have done a better job at it. He would probably know the technology best and could find a way to remove it easily, but asking him for help would be counterproductive. The Titans could not know about her, and it's not like she could just walk into a hospital.

_Hey, I'm Terra. You know, that chick who took over Jump City that one time and caused several natural disasters? I just came back to life, and I was considering getting this mind-controlling suit that my evil former mentor gave me surgically removed. Do you think you could help me out with that?_

Maybe one day she might be able to finish the job, but it definitely wouldn't be anytime in the near future. For now, it would just have to be another thing for her to bear. Terra slapped some cash down on the counter and snatched away her bags - plastic, to her great annoyance. Didn't anyone care about the environment anymore? - before the cashier could do or say anything else. She hoped he wouldn't call the hospital for her...or the cops...or the Titans. Terra sped out of the store and tried to hurry to her rock, but using her powers before had taxed her greatly, and she had very little strength left. Before she was even halfway there, she stumbled over her own feet and hit the pavement hard.

Her breathing was labored and her vision blurred; she knew that she might pass out at any moment. To close her eyes would have been a wonderful relief right then. She had gone through so much pain and lost a lot of blood, especially in the last few hours, and she was just so tired, but wait, were those sirens in the distance? Of course! Who wouldn't call 911 after seeing her in such a condition even if they didn't recognize who she really was.

Terra attempted to drag herself back to her feet but managed only up to her hands and knees. With an outstretched arm, she summoned what was left of her rock to her, but it only slowly rolled her way. She had absolutely no energy left, and her powers were starting to fail her. It dawned on her that she might not be able to get out of this. Were those sirens getting closer?

"Don't panic. Don't panic," she chanted to herself, drawing the rocks closer inch by inch. She had made it out of way worse situations. Terra suddenly heard footsteps behind her and a cry for her to stop. Shocked, she gave an abrupt flick of her wrist and turned just in time to see a pebble fly and hit the cashier squarely in the forehead. He fell into a crumpled heap on the ground, unconscious. "Oops."

Terra had to get out of the open quickly, so she started to crawl at a steady pace - though she stumbled several times - to an alley behind the drugstore, dragging the rocks behind her the entire way. She leaned against the brick wall of the store and sucked in lungfuls of freezing air. She knew that this wasn't going to be good enough. The police would surely find her, but there was no way she could go anywhere else in her condition. She could barely move now, and her eyes just couldn't seem to focus properly. "Stay awake," she scolded herself weakly.

This was all going so wrong. The police would get to her, she might be in the news, and the Titans would see her, and she might never be able to move on if she had to face them already. She just didn't know how. She should never have left the lair in her condition, but the small amount of medical supplies in the surviving rooms had already been depleted since her stay there. (She had been living in her own hidden room after digging it out, and she took supplies like money from a few of the others that had survived.)

Terra turned her face to the sky, wanting to see the stars to help her try and calm down, and saw that same black bird staring down at her from the edge of the rooftop. Come to think of it, it had been watching over this entire time. Terra shifted her position to get a better look at the curious creature and realized with horror that it was a raven.

_Crap. Crapcrapcrapcrapcrap._

This was exactly what she wanted to avoid. Terra fumbled for words. "Please, don't tell!" she begged. "I...I just can't. Don't tell Beast Boy or...or the Titans...or...I mean, anybody. You can't tell. I don't want to...I need to be alone. Just...just don't tell. Please..." She couldn't think of hardly anything else to say. How on earth could she explain this?

"I don't want to be found," she finished. The bird did nothing, only cocking its head at her, probably out of confusion as to why a crazy looking human was spitting gibberish at it. Maybe it was just a regular old raven, and Terra was being paranoid. _I'm losing it. I'm talking to a freaking bird. I'm totally out of my mind now._

"Raven?" she tried one last time, but that spent all the energy she had left. Terra was done. She slumped to the ground, laying with her rocks and her purchases and hearing the sirens become increasingly louder. In her haze, she thought she saw the bird expand and fly towards her, but in her last moments of consciousness, she decided that it was just her vision fading away to black.


	3. Chapter 3: Got Your Back

Terra awoke feeling greatly refreshed. She couldn't remember the last time she had slept so well. She sat up slowly and stretched her sore limbs, giving a huge yawn. Her blanket slipped off of her, and she suddenly realized how cold she was.

That's when she really woke up.

Last night's insanity came rushing back to her as she wrapped her arms around herself to keep warm. She hadn't been asleep; she had passed out, but could someone really pass out for so long. It had been the middle of the night, but judging by the sun, it was already late morning. How had nobody found her? She last remembered being chased by police sirens, but she was still sitting behind that same drug store, her rocks and bags strewn about her. She had been unconscious for so long, but somehow the police and whoever came to take out the trash hadn't seen her. She knew Jump City was a little screwed up, but seriously? WTH?

Then, she remembered one last little detail that explained it all...mostly. The bird. Could it be? Did Raven actually help her, or was it all just her imagination? (Terra was known to be a tad paranoid at times.) It all added up. Nobody had found her because Raven had used her magic to conceal her. She slept better because Raven had allowed it. Looking down at her body, Terra also realized that a good many of her wounds had healed, and even some of the metal had miraculously disappeared off of her skin. She remembered that Raven had healing powers. It all made sense, except...

Terra had been pretty sure that Raven had hated her. The last real conversation they had hadn't been exactly civil. Raven somehow knew that Terra had been trouble since the very beginning, but had decided to trust her anyway, and Terra had betrayed that in the end. It had been pretty cruel. After all the things she had said and done, why would she help?

Terra came to the realization that it was because they actually weren't so different from each other. From what little she had gotten about Raven's past while spying, Terra remembered that she had been pretty alone in the universe before meeting the Titans. Just like her. Raven had run away from someone (she never specified who) that wanted to use her powers for evil. Just like her. She had to take extra caution to keep her powers and check. Just. Like. Her.

Maybe Raven had helped her because she always understood that they were similar, and she knew the importance of being alone sometimes, but she also knew that sometimes you need a little extra help. Then again, she might have just helped because she felt like it was the right thing to do, or something. Or maybe she thought that once Terra could give up her powers and old life completely, she would no longer be a problem. She could wipe her hands clean of Terra forever. While the last one made a lot of sense, the first one sounded nicer in her head, and she decided to stick to it for now. It was nice to think that someone understood her and wanted to help her move on, but it was also bittersweet in a way. Terra had just realized that Raven had really been a true friend to her, and if she moved on, she would be giving up that friendship.

With that weighing heavily on her mind, Terra gathered up her bags, scrambled onto her rock, and disappeared into the cloudy sky.

The next week was incredibly boring for her. The only thing exciting she ever did was eat, and that wasn't often because she was trying to ration the snacks she had bought. Terra hated being hungry, though, so she had to find other activities to take her mind of the boredom and starvation. She practiced control of her powers by unearthing more hallways in the hidden part of the lair. She had found a spare room and decided to stay in there from now on. Being in what used to be her room when she was with Slade was terribly uncomfortable. She dressed in an old t-shirt and shorts that had managed to survive that she had found sitting in the closet of her old room.

She had stitched up the larger wounds that Raven hadn't completely healed using the first aid kit, and others were wrapped in all-too-familiar bandages that she always seemed to forget to change as often as she should. Eventually, she ran out of bandages and food, and what little clothing she had was already threadbare, not that it really helped to keep her warm in the first place. For the first time since her incident at the drug store, she would have to venture back outside of the lair.

She combed through her matted hair for the first time since she bought the comb, and it snapped in two before she was even halfway through, only prolonging the painful process, which was fine by Terra. She was trying to procrastinate. She knew that she would need a lot more money than before because she was planning on a larger shopping trip that would keep her sustained for a while. She also knew that the money was located in a safe in Slade's room. It wasn't his bedroom. (She wasn't even sure he had one. She had never seen him sleep.) It was a large room with a massive computer on one wall that he basically used as a study, writing on complicated papers Terra never understood while spying on the Titans, but he spent so much time in there that it only made sense to call it his room. Because of the awful memories that room generated, it was no wonder why she always walked a little faster when passing by, like a scared child trying to get through a dark hallway.

She knew it was pretty childish. Slade was dead, after all. She had made quite sure of it. How much deader can you get than being thrown into a volcano? Still, his presence seemed to haunt every corner of that room.

She finished combing through her hair and checked her appearance three times in a shattered piece of glass that she used for a mirror. Each time she looked, she was more unsatisfied than the last time. Now, Terra was no beauty queen, but she hated every time loose strands of hair fell over her right eye. It looked like her, and yet, it didn't. It could have been her thinner appearance due to not eating so much - the slightly sunken in eyes and prominent cheekbones - but she was pretty sure it was the hair.

Eventually, she forced herself down the hallway and made it to Slade's room, but she froze at the entrance. She couldn't do this again. Every time she walked in there, she remembered Slade's one eye staring her down, always making her feel like she had something to prove that would finally get its heat to lift. No matter what she did, though, the intensity of his glare only got worse and worse and worse. Terra became aware that she was breathing heavily, and had to take a minute to slow down to keep from hyperventilating. She stared at the safe on the other side of the room, smashed open from the last time she had taken a withdrawal.

That was it! She was surrounded by rock. Why couldn't she just lift up the safe on a rock and bring it to her? It was foolproof, so she did exactly that. To her dismay, though, at least half of its contents fluttered out inside the room, but what was left inside was plenty. She could get the rest later, but for now, she grabbed every last dollar from the safe, wadded them up into neat little rolls, and stuffed them into her pockets.

Her day out was wonderful. She walked to Jump City's supermarket that sold clothes, food, other amenities, and even had a Starbucks and a McDonalds. She stuffed her face with her first hot meal since she didn't know when, and gathered up enough canned foods to last her a while, and even bought herself some nice new clothes that would actually keep her warm and some for later in the spring. She paid for everything with money to spare and changed in the bathroom, taking a second to wipe some of the grime off her face. (The shower in the lair was out of order, of course.)

Terra returned to the lair, full and warm and content, dragging heavy bags that she didn't seem to mind. As she passed by her statue, though, she noticed something odd. She knew that Beast Boy and the other Titans used to leave lots of flowers for her, but she had cleared out the dead ones some time ago. Now, a package lay there at the pedestal, one that she knew hadn't been there when she left. She set down the bag and cautiously approached it.

_**(Wow, guys. I'm sooo sorry I haven't updated in so long. Life just gets in the way, especially when it steals the little notebook I was writing fanfiction in, so I had to start from scratch. I tried to make this chapter a little longer to try and make up for it, and the fourth chapter will be posted soon. I promise! Thanks to everybody who asked me to update, or I might have forgotten.)**_


End file.
